


Oh, A Room Of Our Own (And A Key Into Space)

by rathernotmyname



Category: Queen (Band)
Genre: Birthday Presents, Domestic Fluff, Freddie is a minx, I can't write (graphic) smut so I didn't, Jim is 300 percent done for most of this, Lots of it, M/M, Phoebe & Joe are precious, Title from "Rockland" by Katzenjammer, True Love, and their rosaries, annoying old ladies, author had a lot of fun writing Jim & Bandmates, because it's Garden Lodge, blink and you miss it - Freeform, dont we know it, it's all fade to black, rated T for some bad words and 2 mentiones of AIDS, they have a part in Jim being done, this is pure fluff don't be scared away by the beginning, this is the main point of the story ngl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-12-27 18:24:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21123245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rathernotmyname/pseuds/rathernotmyname
Summary: '...And it’s a beautiful little world. If there really are such things as multiple universes, as Brian always lectures so enthusiastically, Jim thinks that Garden Lodge deserved one all of its own.'Moments that transpire in the week before Jim's birthday.Written for the "1 Year of BoRhap" assignment.





	Oh, A Room Of Our Own (And A Key Into Space)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AnironSidh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnironSidh/gifts).

> Author's note:  
I DO NOT CONSENT TO MY WORK BEING HOSTED OR REPOSTED ON ANY UNOFFICIAL APPS OR WEBSITES OTHER THAN _ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN_ WITHOUT MY APPROVAL, PARTICULARLY APPS WITH AD REVENUE AND SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES.

> Oh, a room of our own,  
and a key into space,  
a door that is locked  
I'm naked and bruised  
Freedom.  
_Katzenjammer, "Rockland"_

There is nothing more to say.

Maybe, Jim thinks, it was over before it had even quite started. He had hoped, and pleaded with a God he doesn’t really believe in, because so much is at stake – his belief in himself, his hope, and his honour, too, in a twisted sort of way.

But in the end, he knew how this would turn out. He just is no match for him, for nobody, really. And he is definitely not enough to count as a worthy counterpart, a worthy opponent, or whatever one may call it in this case.

And perhaps, in a way, Jim loves him, and he tried his best, but it isn’t enough.

Roger beats his arse in tennis anyway.

The ball sails over Jim’s racket and he misses it by a mile, and just like that, he loses his honour and Brian loses 20£.

“I win! I win!” Roger cheers, throwing his racket at Brian’s head. Their curly-haired friend catches it and grumbles disgruntledly.

“Jim, what are you doing?” he asks Jim in despair. “This is _your_ bloody tennis court, and I ask you: what in the heavens are you using it for? Square dance parties?”

It’s only a makeshift tennis court, but Brian’s guess is not that inaccurate, in fact (Jim does not dare to tell him that. That’s something for Freddie to tell, should he ever do it. And as far as he knows Freddie, he absolutely will).

“Tennis is more Freddie’s hobby, I must confess,” he says. “We could have a gardening contest next time. Or…” At this he glances at Brian’s mop, “Perhaps a hairdressing competition?”

Brian deadpans and Roger cackles.

“Well, as long as you don’t colour anyone’s hair green by accident, it’s just fine by me,” John speaks up for the first time.

“Oi!” shouts Roger and Brian chokes on air. Jim smirks. He didn’t see Roger’s bleach accident in person, sadly, but he saw enough photographs of it.

Freddie always rants about how Roger should be glad about his natural hair being as perfect as it is. (Jim prefers Freddie’s hair, especially since Roger’s already seems to suffer from a slightly receding hairline, but he is mostly certainly biased about anything related to Freddie.)

He twists his ring out of habit and hands Brian’s twenty quid over to Roger, who smiles brightly and stuffs it into the pocket of his trousers, out of which it will definitely fall sometime this evening.

A loud, birdlike call of “Cooeeeee!” shakes them from their friendly banter – dinner is ready.

Freddie leans dangerously far out of the window as they reach the door leading inside.

“Did something explode?” John calls up to him. Freddie promptly ignores him.

“Jim, darling, did you win? Tell me you won, go on! Phoebe, are you listening?”

“I lost,” Jim answers, and Freddie throws a pillow at Phoebe’s retreating form, its owner giggling like a school girl.

“Bugger,” Freddie sighs when he meets them in the hallway while Jim and his bandmates take their shoes off. “I bet my dessert on your win!”

“And who dared to betray Jim?” Roger asks distractedly – Goliath has joined them and wants to be petted.

“Phoebe did, that rotter. Said that I wasn’t as successful at teaching you to play tennis as I thought I was,” Freddie scoffs.

“Well…“ John starts, but Freddie interrupts him without skipping a beat. “Good for him that I don’t like rhubarb that much anyway. Lucky me!” He smooches Jim’s cheek and storms off, eager to re-join Joe and Phoebe in the dining room.

“Do want my dessert, Roger? It’ll only cost you twenty pounds,” Brian suggests as they follow Freddie. Jim steps to the side as Roger takes Brian into an affectionate headlock and absentmindedly twists his ring.

When he looks up, John’s eyes follow the move of Jim’s fingers and he smiles; a wide, happy smile, making his eyes crinkle and presenting his tooth gap for all their little world to see.

And it’s a beautiful little world. If there really are such things as multiple universes, as Brian always lectures so enthusiastically, Jim thinks that Garden Lodge deserved one all of its own.

* * *

There is no such thing as a quiet day at Garden Lodge, really.

The cats meow at Jim when he encounters them in the hallways or in kitchen cabinets, and they scream at each other and the human residents when they trespass some invisible territory or dare to get up later than nine o’clock to feed them.

Joe turns on the radio or puts a record on in the living room and putters around in the kitchen.

Phoebe floats around the house or speaks to what’s-his-name on the telephone for hours on end.

Jim hums and mows the lawn and waters the flowerbeds and cuts off the dry twigs of the bushes.

Freddie sings and dances and plays piano and screams in delight or shouts in frustration about this or that.

(The sounds he makes when they close their bedroom door is no-one’s business but theirs.)

“Where did my garden shears go?” Jim asks Phoebe when he finds him doing God knows what in his little makeshift office.

“If they aren’t outside I have nothing to do with it. Go ask Joe, perhaps he used it for the rosemary?”

Jim goes and asks, and Phoebe joins him, because he wants to gander what’s for lunch.

“I may have,” Joe answers, “But I can’t remember where I put it afterwards…”

Jim decides not to ask why Joe would use his bloody garden shears for the rosemary and instead says: “Perhaps you forgot it in the pantry?”

Joe snaps his fingers. “I think I left it with the knives. Hold on.”

He vanishes, and Jim asks Phoebe: “Do we have a room just for knives?”

Phoebe doesn’t quite know.

“Oh!” Joe exclaims from the back.

“Did you find them?”

“Yes – er, no, not really…”

When Jim tries to enter the room Joe quickly pushes him back out.

“No, no shears here, sorry Jim, really, _très desolé_, ‘scuse me.”

Jim tries to exchange a confused glance with Phoebe – it doesn’t work, because Phoebe is too busy exchanging startled glances with Joe. 

He gives up.

“I’ll write a new one on my birthday wish list then,” he announces resignedly and goes back outside.

Soft piano music escapes from behind the closed living room window, stopping periodically to Freddie’s equally soft singing/humming/cursing. Jim decides to tend to the tulips directly below the window first. He raises the salvaged kitchen scissors and goes to work.

Later, as Freddie and Jim lie in bed, Jim strokes his fingers over Freddie’s artistically arched brows and thinks of the perhaps-perhaps-not-knife room, regarding the late evening sun shining through the partly opened windows. It throws golden rays on their potted plants, wooden furniture, the handful of records leaning at a wall of their little shelf, the old ornate mirror standing next to the dresser, and on the edge of the bed. Freddie’s eyes look like molten cinnamon. Jim feels… ‘happy’ is not enough. There is no word that is big or full enough to describe how he feels.

So Jim just feels.

By God, does he feel.

Freddie snuffles into his chest and searches his lips (he smells of cinnamon, too; sharp and sweet, and little like curry and cologne and soap and sweat and flower soil), and Jim’s lips meet Freddie’s and Jim feels and feels and feels.

Delilah is sunbathing on the windowsill; she grants them no attention whatsoever. ‘Fine by me’ Jim thinks and helps Freddie, who is helplessly entangled in his pullover. They don’t bother to pull a blanket over themselves to shield Delilah from view – she has had enough litters from neighbourhood tomcats to know how it works and lived long enough with Freddie and Jim to know not to stare at them or disturb them otherwise.

By the time the golden light has turned into streetlight-yellow Freddie is warm and limp and asleep in Jim’s arms and Jim has completely forgotten about his garden shears.

* * *

It’s Jim’s birthday in a week, and his entire circle of acquaintances seems to have started to mystery-monger already. Jim is touched by that, really, but he also gets a little tired of being constantly shoved out of rooms or of listening to conversations that stop mid-sentence as soon as the participants notice that he’s there.

The ever-mysterious knife-chamber, as Jim has come to call it, is a strictly no-Jim-zone. He continues to use the kitchen scissors for his bushes and does not defy them.

To Jim’s surprise Freddie is the worst of them all. Seemingly innocent and casual conversations about the weather or the dirt beneath Jim’s fingernails end abruptly – Freddie quickly hides his muffled giggles in the coat of a passing cat or in his own hands. Confused looks and bribery only last so long; there is nothing to convince him to spill the beans already.

It’s frustrating.

“Will you gift me new garden shears?” Jim mumbles into Freddie’s mustache one night. “Joe and I are in a cockfight over the kitchen scissors every other day now.”

“Now I would hope not, darling,” Freddie murmurs back cheekily, “This cock is all mine to fight for.” To underline his statement he makes a grab for Jim’s crotch.

Jim manages to dodge the attempt. “You’re deflecting again.”

“I sure am.”

“Freddie—”

“Hush, dear, you’re not about to be a buzzkill, are you?”

Jim sighs. “I guess not,” he grumbles and stops dodging Freddie’s eager fingers.

* * *

The following day Jim goes to the new antiques shop at Covent Garden. Freddie has had to be carried out of the house at 9 o’clock by his bandmates, kicking and screaming bloody murder, to arrive at the studio early for once.

This leaves Jim with an afternoon for himself, since Joe and Phoebe seem to have hidden somewhere in the garden and won’t allow Jim to join them.

The shop is delightfully old in design. From the brocade wallpapers and golden tapestries to the tiny alcove filled with books and embroidered pillows; everything gives off an atmosphere of comfort and calm.

When Jim sneezes from the dust gathered in the air, an elder lady appears from behind a shelf.

“Good afternoon, my dear!” she calls as if she is twenty feet away and not shouting directly into Jim’s ear. He does his best not to flinch.

“Good afternoon,” he calls in kind. Perhaps she is hard of hearing.

“No need to shout like that, I’m not quite that old!”

Or not.

The woman strokes her hand down an amber rosary hanging from her neck and smiles at him, baring nicotine-yellow teeth.

(This time he does flinch, but the woman doesn’t notice.)

“Are you searching for something specific or just browsing a little? We have some new Victorian tea-sets, quite extraordinary they are, or would you like to have a look at our little library? We have all the old classics – Sherlock Holmes, Moby Dick, Goethe and Lessing, Shakespeare…”

“I’m just browsing,” Jim interrupts her.

“Oh, wonderful. I was just making tea, would you like a cuppa?”

“Thanks, but no thank you,” he replies. The wind chime on the ceiling would fit perfectly in their bathroom…

“Well then, cheers,” the woman says, and when Jim turns around again, she raises her cup in salute and vanishes behind the shelf again.

Jim spends the better part of his afternoon browsing through the cupboards, taking a look at the ‘extraordinary’ tea-sets, doing his best not to faint at the prices of the wind chimes and admiring the way the sun shines through the dusty windows to make the tapestries glitter like waterfalls nailed on the wall. He decides on a royal cape he wants to give to Freddie as a gag, with a crown to go with it.

He takes a delicate silver lighter for himself as an afterthought.

He twists his ring while waiting for his overeager host to finish cashing in his pick.

“Oh my!” she rips him from his thoughts, startling him so badly he almost falls head over heals over the countertop.

“Who is the lucky girl?” the woman continues unaffectedly when Jim fails to react accordingly.

Jim turns around to see if she is speaking to someone else. The shop is empty, apart from them.

“What do you mean?” he answers in confusion.

The woman tuts in fond exasperation.

“Your ring,” she explains. “I take it you have a wife?”

Normally Jim would say yes, but lately referring to Freddie as his wife makes him irritable. ‘I have a husband’ he wants to tell everyone, but he knows all too well that it isn’t safe to say in this special situation. It makes him angry, but there’s simply nothing he can do about it – he’s had his share of experiences with orthodoxic people.

That’s why he says:

“No.”

The woman looks confused for a second, and then sudden epiphany lights up her wrinkled face.

“Ohhh. Catholic?”

Jim’s mouth hangs open in incomprehension.

“That’s the most beautiful purity ring I have ever seen in my life,” she continues steadfastly.

Jim’s brain abruptly decides to go to sleep for the rest of the day.

“Erm,” he says intelligently.

“Oh, no need to be shy, there are so little boys who honour the word of God these days,” the woman laments, agitatedly stirring her teacup with a spoon.

“Certainly,” Jim answers lamely.

“What’s your name, dear?” the old bat asks, smiling her yellow smile, and Jim thinks:

‘Fuck it. Might as well.’

“James” he says.

Then he continues to imagine Freddie’s reaction to this hare-brained afternoon as the woman clutches her rosary in delight and excitedly calls for her niece.

(When Jim tells him the story over dinner, Freddie laughs so hard he sprains a rib.)

* * *

The day before his birthday, Jim is fed up with the constant “Jim, love, you can’t go in here yet”’s and “Sorry, mate, you can’t have your garden hose right now”’s and moves into Delilah’s room.

“Won’t bother anyone here,” he tells Freddie when he tries to coax Jim back into their bed.

Freddie looks so upset that Jim almost changes his mind, but then he huffs and rolls his eyes.

“If you insist, then have it your way,” he grumbles and shuffles off.

They relocate to the living room for their cuddle sessions.

“Do you still love me?” Freddie asks quietly and strokes Jim’s cheek.

“Always,” Jim answers. “I really need some new garden shears, though.”

“I know, darling.”

* * *

There is a big track of mud trailing through the house when Jim comes down after a much-needed afternoon nap. Before he can ask what the bloody hell is going on or try to follow the trail, Phoebe flies in and starts to frantically wipe the floor. Jim makes sure that there is no mud on the expensive carpet in the living room or on any cats and goes back upstairs.

The kitchen is a new taboo-zone, as he quickly finds out.

* * *

Birthday sex is a tradition that Freddie insists on, even if it means that they have to ban the cats from their own room – which normally comes as close to a sacrilege as it is possible in this household.

Then they wrap each other up in blankets and have a light breakfast with Phoebe and Joe on the balcony. They will have brunch later with family and friends.

“Are you excited?” Freddie asks excitedly as Joe helps him to blindfold Jim without beheading him.

“I reckon so,” Jim muffles from behind the heavy scarf.

“Freddie is at least twice as excited as you, no matter how excited _you_ may be,” Phoebe snickers.

“Would be a cause to worry otherwise,” Joe remarks.

“Now, don’t be unkind, you assholes,” Freddie huffs indignantly. “Come on then, love, down we go!”

They lead Jim down the stairs and through the house. It takes unusually long until it refers to Jim that they lead him in circles through every other room in the house.

“What are you doing? I do live here, you know?”

“Yes, but it builds the suspense, doesn’t it?” Freddie replies eagerly, circling once again through the hallway.

At last, they come to a stop in the kitchen. It’s toasty warm and so brightly illuminated with candles that Jim can see them through his scarf.

“Now, close your eyes, and only open them when I tell you!” Freddie exclaims, voice squeaky with excitement.

Jim takes a beat. “I’m wearing a scarf in front of my face,” he tells Freddie, bewildered.

“Yes, yes, I’ll take that off in a second,” Freddie answers impatiently. “Are they shut?”

Jim obeys and shuts his eyes.

“Yes.”

“Splendid.”

With a tug, the scarf comes off, and the candlelight brightens behind Jim’s closed eyelids.

A pause.

“Well… what do you think?” Freddie asks nervously.

Jim gives a confused noise, and he hears Phoebe gently pat Freddie’s back.

“You haven’t told him to open his eyes yet, Freddie.”

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Freddie groans in embarrassment. “I'm sorry! Open your eyes now, darling.”

Jim does.

He stares.

And –

He cries.

His wheelbarrow that had died of rust last winter stands in the middle of the kitchen, whole and hole-less and buffed until shining. Open wooden boxes are stacked upon each other inside it, filled with flower soil serve as the most beautiful indoor flower beds Jim has ever seen.

A giant Japanese Bonsai stands proudly in the biggest box, carefully cut to depict fluffy clouds. Around it are differently coloured versions of reeds, thick and long and healthy. The smallest boxes that balance on the edges of their bigger counterparts are filled to the brim with bush roses, jonquils and daffodils, daisies and forget-me-nots, and the tiniest one of them all is full of clover and one single freesia.

And on the side of the wheelbarrow lean Jim’s garden shears, wrapped into a big red bow, almost apologetic.

“We might have to wipe the floor again when we push all of this outside,” Phoebe says quietly when Jim fails to find words. “It’s quite heavy, and you’ve seen how much we spilled yesterday.”

“I wanted to put the cake and the card on it, too,” Freddie speaks up after handing Jim a paper towel. “But there was no more room, and we figured it would be better to give you Joe’s magnificent cake later, when everyone can admire it.”

Jim blows his nose and hugs all three.

“This is the most wonderful present I have ever received,” he sniffles. “And I have my garden shears back!”

Freddie shrieks with laughter while Jim and Joe circle around the present, Joe pointing out the various plants they retrieved from Heaven knows where and lovingly planted in a repaired wheelbarrow.

Jim hugs Freddie and his two friends a few more times, so overcome with happiness that he barely manages a sentence except different versions of ‘Thank you’ (_he feels, feels, feels_) and then he opens the kitchen door to let a few curious cats inside.

* * *

“There’s not a single person in this country that eats their beans with mayonnaise,” Brian says, munching on a piece of Joe’s handmade birthday cake that Jim generously shares with his guests, even though Freddie tried to convince them that it’s “just to look at”.

“Oh, bollocks,” Roger rails, glaring at his bandmate over his own half-eaten piece of cake.  
“We consume Heinz Ketchup like tomato-fuelled lunatics, so do tell me why people wouldn’t eat mayonnaise, too, huh?”

“Because it’s French,” Freddie explains and jumps up from his seat to help Phoebe carry in a new set of silverware.

Jim hears Roger mumble something unintelligible that contains a lot of “bloody”’s and “fucking”’s and quickly stands up to greet the rest of the Deacon family – Veronica had had to pick up their oldest son from her parents.

Garden Lodge is full to bursting. Coats and boots are stacked on top of each other in the entrance hall, children play and cheer and pet the cats to death, the birthday song for Jim makes the windows rattle. More than one reporter has to be kicked from the property.

“Now that’s how a birthday has to be like,” Freddie tells him contently, kissing Jim soundly on the lips.

“Not quite,” Roger says and brings out the Champagne.

Much, much later, or rather the next morning, the guests have left and Phoebe and Joe have gone to bed.

Jim and Freddie are dead drunk, but they still manage to sit upright next to each other on the piano stool, giggling and tinkling on the keys. From time to time Freddie belts out a spoofed version of some popular song (a lot of them are his own or at least by Queen) and Jim eats the last bit of birthday cake and turns around to his proudly standing wheelbarrow flower bed every so often.

“Fuck off and die, you fag!!” Freddie crows to the melody of “Qu’est sera, sera”; Jim can dimly hear Phoebe burst out laughing from upstairs.

Freddie stops abruptly and swivels around to face Jim. Jim has to hold onto his shoulder so he doesn’t fall off the stool.

“Will you stay with me? No matter what happens? Even if I can’t make you happy anymore?” Freddie asks him, breathlessly.

Jim gives him a puzzled look. “I love you. You’ll always make me happy, Freddie. And I—”

“Will you stay?” Freddie repeats insistently.

Jim blinks. And –

“Oh.”

He takes a few seconds to digest that.

Freddie looks at him, suddenly very sober.

“It will get harder, darling, for both of us.”

“I know.”

“I won’t be mad, you know.”

“Hm-mh.”

“It will get ugly—”

“Freddie?”

“Yes, dear?”

“Firstly: fuck that. Might as well. And besides, the cats would miss me, wouldn’t they?”

Freddie’s beaming smile, all of his white teeth presented proudly, replaces all imagery of absolute completeness Jim has ever had.

The freesia surrounded by clover glows in the candlelight.

_fin_

**Author's Note:**

> So, there you have my work for the 1 Year of BoRhap assignement! The prompt was by the lovely AnironSidh, I hope you like this!  
Who would have thought that I would ever write a Jim-centric Jimercury story... not me, for sure. I'm not so sure about the ending (and I always seem to have problems with my endings), but all in all it turned out pretty good, I think.
> 
> I only thought about looking up when Jim's birthday is when I was halfway through the story... so we'll just pretend they had a very warm January. Ahem.  
Jim & Brian & Roger & John were so much fun to write, and I'm sorry that "the bandmates" (John especially) had such minor roles in this. I based their familiarity on the few photos of Jim with them, and I just have to mention that many aspects of this story are completely made up. I have no idea what the layout of the Garden Lodge is or if there is enough room for a makeshift tenniscourt, or if Delilah ever had kittens.  
Furthermore, I have to admit that I never read Mercury & Me or any other similar books.  
I also apologize for the artistical liberty regarding the origin of Freddie's royal garb and with the "Qu'est sera, sera" parody that actually occured when Peter Straker was visiting Garden Lodge one evening, I believe.  
Another thing is that I tried to write this as British as possible. Did my German ass succeed?  
If anyone gets the "easter-eggs" I hid in Jim's present, let me know! ;)  
Hope you enjoyed!
> 
> Thanks to AnironSidh for organising this exchange!  
Crossposted on tumblr: **@rathernotmyname**


End file.
